March 24, 2010

A Musical Interlude (I)

Sometimes in the rush of work and in thinking heady thoughts about language and books :), I forget that there are other senses that need coddling. With that in mind, I’ve decided to occasionally not write about books and language and instead to coddle some of my other senses with musical videos.

What follows are the first musical video interludes. Suggestions for future interludes are welcome. In the meantime, let’s soothe our savage beasts and enjoy these music interludes.

The first video is Stand By Me performed by musicians around the world.

This video demonstrates how realistic computer animation can be and the imagination that can be used to create a Fantastic Machine for music.

This final interlude is selections from La Traviata performed in a food marketplace. I would love to wander into my local food emporium and find the staff serenading me with opera selections; I’m a big opera fan.

I hope you enjoyed this change of pace. As much as I love books and language, our world has much more to offer. Partaking of food for our other senses can only be good.

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One of the most uplifting musical experiences I’ve had in recent years is the documentary about the Young@Heart Chorus. There should be links to it at the PBS website as well as their own. It’s absolutely wonderful. Of course, I’m a tad biased because one of my high-school classmates is their director.
Ruth T-C

I just started to look at the three videos you posted. The first, “Stand By Me,” has been kicking around on the Internet for at least the past year or so. It is from an irregular series, “Playing for Change,” which is professionally produced. The first singer, Roger Ridley, is an old friend of my wife of me. More than 20 years ago my Roger worked at United Cerebral Palsy on East 23rd Street in Manhattan, as a security guard and maintenance man. My wife worked there as a social worker. I would come around often because the UCP office was around the corner from the EFA office when I was EFA co-executive.
Roger left his job at UCP to become a street musician. He was quite successful at it. I think he had the distinction of getting one of the very rare permits from the MTA to perform on subway mezzanine levels legally. We lost touch with Roger for many years, then, on our first trip to Las Vegas, I think about 15 years ago, we went to an expensive show at the New York, New York Casino-Hotel featuring street musicians. Imagine our surprise when the star of the show was Roger! He pointed us out during his performance and we got together with him after the show.
We have since lost touch with him once more, but he seems to be a popular musician who performs mostly on the street. The producers of the “Playing for Change” series seem to know him well.